The question was posed in a previous blog. Who is monitoring McKinney Utility Districts? Exactly one year later I got my answer. I knew the City Council and Staff weren’t asking the right questions when they entered into a consent agreement in 2012. That decison set a bond issuance cap of well over $200 million on a relatively small parcel of land in Trinity Falls that put them into the big-league of indebtness. Last Monday night Trinity Falls came back to the Council asking for the debt ceiling to be raised to $318 million!
Bad decision. Bad timing. Bad presentation.
Four new Council members are now asking questions. Good questions. The right questions. Common sense questions. If you have $262 million authorized and you’ve only issued $38 million, what’s the rush? And, by the way, let’s better understand who allowed this beast and why?
If you want to see my nominiation for the Presentations Gone Bad Award, see the video of last Monday night’s meeting at http://mckinney.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=5&clip_id=3930 at the 1:39:13 mark. First, note the rate of speed in which the speaker is talking. It’s close to those disclosures at the end of ads on TV or radio.
It might also be a tip-off to the validity of this request.
Note first that he says the MUD is not in the City limits of McKinney. That’s a true statement, but stick it in your back pocket for a minute. We will come back to this little jewel.
Note that there is mention of 5,000 rooftops, but the speaker can’t answer a basic question about the amount of expected commerical property. And the 4-5 suits sitting behind me failed to come to his rescue. But I can attest they were squirming.
Then wait for the slow-motion train wreck when the Mayor starts reading an excerpt from a letter written by a homeowner inside the MUD.
Oh, it gets worse. The Council starts playing tag team with simple questions. Questions like where does the MUD board post notices of their meetings? Well, they are posted at the Collin County Courthouse. Yep, you heard correctly. In case you don’t know, you don’t go by the Courthouse on your way to get a loaf of bread. It’s a destination trip, but not in the vacation sense.
Where are the meeting held? At the MUD engineers’ offices in Frisco. FRISCO??? Strangely, there is no place to have a meeting in Trinity Falls. They don’t have a community center, and they don’t have the money to build one. Wrong answer to a Council being asked to bump a debt ceiling from a gigantic $262 million to an interglactical $318 million.
Then comes the biggest goof of the night. The Trinity Falls representative was asked about why notices were not posted online? The response was that the MUD did not have a Web site. And then he turned into a lawyer and started giving reasons why a Web site invoked all kinds of burdens. However, assurances were given that a Web site would be available sometime in the future.
May we take a break here and ask that you go to http://www.trinityfalls.com? Dang if there isn’t a Web site! It appears to be fairly mature. None of those “under construction” icons.
Whoa! Look at this on the front page: “Trinity Falls is a 1,700-acre master planned community in McKinney, Texas.“
Now reach back in your hip pocket where you saved that earlier comment from the speaker, the correct one.
Trinity Falls is not in the City limits, but it is being marketed as if it is. No wonder people living there are confused.
As a side note, look at their monthly newsletters. I checked a few, and I don’t see any notices about Board meetings, agendas or minutes. I did find a huge splash encouraging residents to check out the shopping in Plano. How interesting. Could you please come begging to catapult a debt ceiling from the McKinney City Council and then promote shopping in another City!
Do you see anything wrong with this picture?
What I do see is that the New Council is not going to be the Rubber Stampers of old. Trinity Falls was told the item would be continued at the regular Council meeting on Tuesday, the next night. I watched that meeting and the item was pulled from the agenda by Trinity Falls. “Indefinitely.”
As is Wooden-Stake Indefinitely? We shall see.
And I am guessing that whether Trinity Falls comes back or not has no bearing on this Council’s desire to dig deeply into MUDs. The inquiry isn’t over. It’s just getting started.
What is of great importance is that Trinity Falls residents don’t have a vote in McKinney. But they do have a voice now. LFM
Let's Talk About It, Lewis! 
I don’t know if it is a result of your efforts,but the website got changed, new MUD signs went up going into trinity falls, the notice got posted at the clubhouse of the meeting, and it is being held in McKinney.
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